{"id":2965,"date":"2015-07-08T11:53:27","date_gmt":"2015-07-08T10:53:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2965"},"modified":"2015-07-17T18:11:45","modified_gmt":"2015-07-17T17:11:45","slug":"porpoiseful-birdwatching-druridge-bay-safari-06072015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/druridge\/porpoiseful-birdwatching-druridge-bay-safari-06072015","title":{"rendered":"Porpoiseful birdwatching; Druridge Bay Safari 06\/07\/2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

mid-Summer can be a quiet time for birdwatching, but there are some days where everything just falls into place…<\/p>\n

I arrived in Seahouses to collect Nigel and Barbara for a day birdwatching further south on the Northumberland coast, and we headed towards Druridge Bay<\/a> in beautiful hot summer weather.\u00a0 With a flat calm sea we started with a little while seawatching.\u00a0 Gannet, Sandwich Tern, Eider<\/strong><\/em> and Fulmar<\/strong><\/em> were all flying by, but our attention was gripped by at least 6 Harbour Porpoise<\/strong><\/em>, including a mother with a very small calf \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 Moving on we watched the elegant trio of Little Egret, Avocet<\/strong><\/em> and Black-tailed Godwit<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 There were at least 22 of the latter, in a mixed roosting flock with Lapwing, Wigeon, Curlew<\/strong><\/em> and 9 Mediterranean Gulls<\/strong><\/em> of varying age.\u00a0 More gull interest came in the form of 8 Little Gulls<\/strong><\/em>, also with a range of ages.\u00a0 A Sedge Warbler<\/strong><\/em> clambered to the top of the reeds briefly before dropping out of sight and breaking into song, a male Linnet<\/strong><\/em> looked garishly pink, male Stonechat<\/strong><\/em> and male Reed Bunting<\/strong><\/em> vied for the award of ‘most attractive’ and we steadily made our way north.\u00a0 Male and female Marsh Harriers<\/strong><\/em> impressed, as they always do, Great Crested Grebe<\/strong><\/em> sailed serenely by and our wader count for the day rose, with Common Sandpiper, Oystercatcher<\/strong><\/em> and Redshank<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 A quick ID masterclass was helped by Herring, Lesser Black-backed<\/strong><\/em> and Great Black-backed Gulls<\/strong><\/em> all sitting in a line, surrounded on both sides by Cormorants<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Nigel had mentioned a species that they hadn’t managed to see previously, and as the cold wind cut through the overcast conditions – did I forget to mention the weather had changed \ud83d\ude09 – we went in search of it.\u00a0 “Curlew…curlew…curlew<\/strong><\/em>…stripy mean-looking face with shorter bill”, and there was another ‘lifer’ for Nigel and Barbara – a Whimbrel<\/strong><\/em>, and a great way to end the day \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

mid-Summer can be a quiet time for birdwatching, but there are some days where everything just falls into place… I arrived in Seahouses to collect Nigel and Barbara for a day birdwatching further south on the Northumberland coast, and we headed towards Druridge Bay in beautiful hot summer weather.\u00a0 With a flat calm sea we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[40,242,214,372,172,149,122,185,375,488,240,729,123,499,243,93,397,193,210,358,127,227,215,231],"class_list":["post-2965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","tag-avocet","tag-black-tailed-godwit","tag-common-sandpiper","tag-cormorant","tag-curlew","tag-eider","tag-fulmar","tag-gannet","tag-great-black-backed-gull","tag-great-crested-grebe","tag-harbour-porpoise","tag-herrring-gull","tag-lapwing","tag-lesser-black-backed-gull","tag-little-egret","tag-little-gull","tag-marsh-harrier","tag-mediterranean-gull","tag-oystercatcher","tag-redshank","tag-reed-bunting","tag-sedge-warbler","tag-stonechat","tag-whimbrel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2965"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2971,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2965\/revisions\/2971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}